Posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
According to a study by the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development, the average successful drug requires 10 to 15 years of research at an average cost of $802 million—a cost that includes the price tag on the ones that never make it to market. Couple those onerous upfront investments with the fact that patents last only 20 years, and it becomes plain that when a drug might have an earnings window of a mere five or six years, companies are eager to abandon a bad bet early in the race. Another big IT goal in the drug business these days, therefore, is not only to speed winners, but winnow out those costly also-rans as early in the game as possible.
